A No Labels presidential candidate can’t win — but could determine who does

No Labels, a self-styled centrist organization, is looking into running a third-party presidential candidate next year. It’s either a case of delusion, an ego trip or something worse.

No Labels says it’s raising $70 million to get on all 50 state ballots. It has a blue-ribbon panel of supporters and advisers. What it doesn’t have is any serious chance of electing what it considers a moderate independent as president of the United States.  

The organization was launched more than decade ago by a Democratic fundraiser with the aim of forging bipartisan, centrist policies. It has achieved success on Capitol Hill.

But running a presidential candidate is a much different, and far greater, challenge. Democrats charge, credibly, that any candidacy would take more votes from President Biden than from the Republican nominee.

No Labels rejects this. It released a 26,000-voter survey showing that 64 percent of voters want options other than Democrats and Republicans, and that 59 percent said they’d be open to voting for a moderate independent presidential ticket if the alternative were a rerun of Trump v. Biden.

Prominent pollsters are very skeptical of these claims.

“In a contest with Biden and Trump, there is no way a No Labels candidate could win,” Whit Ayres, a leading Republican pollster, told me. “That candidate couldn’t win any states; they’d get zero electoral votes.”

Fred Yang, a leading Democratic poll taker, is only a bit less skeptical. “With the dissatisfaction of both Republicans and Democrats, it looks like an opening,” he noted, “But it’s a real leap to say that once there is an actual candidate and a platform that would be sustainable.”

But it might, as Ayres observed, affect the outcome. In 2000 Green Party candidate Ralph Nader got less than 3 percent of the vote, but that was enough to cost Democrat Al Gore the presidency. Most experts I spoke with tend to agree with Democratic consultant Paul Begala, who charged that in a Biden-Trump rematch, a No Labels candidate “almost certainly would elect Mr. Trump.”     

There is considerable political alienation among the electorate. Large numbers of Americans are not satisfied with the prospect of another Biden-Trump race. But this sense of alienation isn’t new.

Rep. John Anderson (R-Ill.) waged a third-party candidacy in 1980, as did Ross Perot in 1992.

The effort of No Labels reminds me of American Elect, which, fed up with the two major parties and armed with a well-heeled, blue-chip, bipartisan advisory board, vowed to get on all 50 state ballots with a common sense, centrist presidential candidate in 2012.

It never got off the ground. Later, financial heavyweights like Mike Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and Howard Schultz explored independent presidential candidacies, but none of them went anywhere.

No Labels has rich supporters. Its superpac and affiliated groups have donated to scores of congressional candidates of both parties. They can choose which ones and not worry that their positions vary.

That won’t be the case if, as promised, they release a platform this fall and have to take positions on abortion, taxes, health care, immigration and Ukraine. That’s before choosing any possible candidate. 

Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic senator from Connecticut and founding chair of No Labels, has said voters are so unhappy “with the choice of President Trump or

Biden, they want a third alternative.” He has insisted that a No Labels candidate would not hurt Biden.

In an interview a few days ago, Lieberman had generally positive things to say about Biden, but not about Trump. “He has made our politics and society more venal, and threatened the basic premise of our legal system,” Lieberman said of the latter. “That disqualifies him from ever holding office.”

Lieberman said that running a presidential candidate is “just an insurance policy; I’m not sure we would use it.” He said No Labels will decide next March. 

Albert Hunt is the former executive editor of Bloomberg News. He previously served as reporter, bureau chief and Washington editor for The Wall Street Journal. For almost a quarter century he wrote a column on politics for The Wall Street Journal, then The International New York Times and Bloomberg View. He hosts “Politics War Room” with James Carville. Follow him on Twitter @AlHuntDC.